BUSD Implements Helios

Burbank Unified School District Implements Helios for HR and Payroll

Burbank Unified School District (BUSD) has over 17,000 students in its K-12 HR program spread across 22 school sites. It has close to 3,000 employees including teachers, classified staff, administrators, and part-time or temporary workers.

In Brief

BUSD was looking for comprehensive HR and payroll system that could replace or consolidate its five existing systems and databases. After evaluating several systems, BUSD preferred Helios because of its completeness, its ability to talk to other systems, and a friendly team backing it. Helios has provided BUSD a complete HR, time reporting, and online requisition solution that can also easily pull data from county and district systems thereby avoiding multiple data entry. BUSD has saved significant time and cost by consolidating various systems and databases it used prior and by having Helios talk to its key systems. The district is continuing to expand its use of Helios into more areas such as evaluations and employee portal in the future.

Challenge

BUSD had multiple data systems: a county payroll system, 2 FileMakerPro databases, 2 Access databases, and another HR system. All of these together were too cumbersome to use, did not talk to each other, and did not provide the level of functionality that BUSD staff wanted. There were multiple points of data entry, missing or stale data, errors, wasted time and effort. Moreover, BUSD wanted 21st century features like online access for employees, which were missing.

BUSD Chooses Helios

Frustrated by these challenges, BUSD started looking at various HR systems. After a thorough evaluation of all available HR systems for school districts, BUSD chose to implement Helios for its completeness and integration capabilities.

Consolidating Five Databases and Talking to County System

During implementation, Helios imported their previous data including a daily download from its county system offered by LA County Office of Education (LACOE). This allowed BUSD to manage all their HR and payroll data in one place. HR staff is able to run reports at the click of a button allowing them to also see where data needs to be added.

Time Reporting and Payroll

Helios streamlined BUSD’s time reporting and employee attendance. It offered both positive and negative time reporting: negative reporting for paid time off (PTO) for full-time permanent employees; positive reporting for hourly and extra duty employees. It also allowed reporting of substitutes when employees were absent. Helios also is able to automatically accrue vacation and sick time based on bargaining agreements. It can track vacation, sick time, and personal necessity balances and enable employees to access this information online.

Personnel Requisitions and Extra Duty Forms

Helios has also made personnel requisitions and forms online so that staff can complete them online and Helios’ workflow capability routes them to the right approvers. Time reporters can then report time against these workflows including extra duty, school business, and overtime pay.

Dashboard and Reports

The Helios dashboard and built-in reports have saved BUSD significant amount of time and cost. The payroll reports have been extremely helpful to the district. “At BUSD, we were looking for a platform that would integrate and tie the various systems of HR, Payroll, and Budget together. Helios worked with us to determine what our needs were in Burbank Unified. Helios helped replace five other systems and databases and integrates with our county system, providing us with a single end-to-end platform.

It includes time and payroll reporting, workflow requisitions for extra duty, school business, personnel transactions, and more.

We have found Helios team to be responsive and eager to provide a system that works for us. For us, follow through is the key.

We expect a high level of customer service and Helios has delivered!”said Anita Schackmann, HR Director at Burbank Unified School District.

Keep in Touch

Helios Ed provides solutions for K-12 to streamline business and HR operations, increase efficiency, and reduce overhead. Schools save 75% time and cost with Helios while being in compliance. Our approach to customer service aligns our solutions with district or charter needs.